Oh, how could I forget this one. In 1989, I interviewed for a job as biology teacher and wrestling coach in the Austin TX school system. After she interviewd me, the superintendant said “We have one other applicant to interview, and unless he is black the job is yours.” He was black.
Someone left a homeless person’s shopping cart in the vestible of the Barnes & Noble at 18th and Broadway, and I was repeatedly told to move my shopping cart. Once I can see (okay, I do dress down when I’m in NYC), but four times. I finally said “That is not my cart,” put down the books I was gonna buy, and haven’t been back there since.
The state employment office told me repeatedly to “go on welfare.” Every time I went in there, a place that is supported by tax dollars to find people employment, I heard “go on welfare.” It was only went I started telling other (non-white) people about it and the government workers told me not to do that that I caught on. Later I confirmed it with welfare workers: They are desperate to put non-minortity people on welfare, and also to put people on welfare who shouldn’t be on welfare and who will be off welfare very shortly. Makes the welfare system look better.
I suppose I might been discriminated against here and there, depending on how one defines “discrimination,” but only in the most trivial ways. I’m a middle-class white male, so I wonder if it’s even possible for any minor instances of discrimination to have much effect on me.
In grad school, I sometimes ran into the usual academic anti-Catholicism (perhaps this doesn’t exist in science departments, but it certainly does in the humanities departments). No big deal, didn’t keep me out of grad school or hold me back from getting my degree.
As a kid, in grammar school and high school, I ran into the usual ethnic/neighborhood rivalry thing. Again, I really don’t think that I paid any price for it in the long run. A few scraps when I was a kid don’t add up to much at the end of the day.
The point, if I’ve even got one worth making, is that there’s a difference between something like a few black kids giving me shit when I was a teenager (if that qualifies as “discrimination”) and what those same black kids will face for their entire lives (which really does qualify as “discrimination”).
So ultimately, I’ll say no, I haven’t been discriminated against. Once in a while, some people have said some rude things to me. That’s about the extent of it.
Oh, yeah. I forgot one. I was detained once, in the early '90s, by soldiers when I was crossing the border from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland. Apparently my last name is a common one in County Monaghan, and is one that was often used by IRA members crossing the border. And I was travelling on a motorcycle with New York plates, which must have seemed odd to the soldiers at the border.
The soldiers were pretty clear about their feelings on Catholics, both Irish and Irish-American (they believed that all Irish-Americans supported the IRA, both politically and financially). The whole experience was nasty and frightening.
Still, this qualifies as a nasty incident rather than “discrimination,” since I was a tourist and just passing through. Once they let me go, there was no way this was ever going to affect my life again.
Wow. Some of these are horrifying. I apologize, and wish you all strength. You’re good people.
I was, sorta - I was an intern at a telecommunications company outside Madison, WI. Everyone there liked my work, a lot, and I considered asking them for a job when I graduated in a couple of months. My manager told me that although I could try, and although everyone really liked me and my work, there probably wasn’t enough money to hire me as they had just hired the founder’s two grandchildren on. It was kind of a hoot - these were kids who didn’t know any of the products, and didn’t care, while I was doing my best to learn all I could and produce good materials. But I figured that anywhere nepotism was going to be practiced that blatantly wasn’t a place I cared to work anyway. And I got a much better job, working with much more talented and professional people.
Back when he had long hair, my husband was approached by several people asking him if he wanted to buy some MJ. I guess he did sorta look the part…
My cousin, back in the day where he wore only black rock band tee shirts, black jeans, and had very long black hair, was stopped more than once by security personnel at airports. But again, he looked the part…
Oh - I’m a white lady, and SpouseO and my cousin are both white males.
Let me echo Snickers comments by saying that I am shocked at what some of you have been through. This really has been an eye-opener for me. I hope that all of you will be able to get through the rest of your life without going through these same experiences. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but I definitely hope my wish comes true.
I’m a female systems administrator. I used to regularly get called in for lots of interviews and several times have been basically told “we aren’t going to hire you, HR said we needed to interview a woman or a minority.” Hasn’t happened in ten years. But it used to.
Over the last ten years, I’ve sure hit some age discrimination in job searching.
Yes, but I don’t really “mean” it. I mostly trot out the story at those awful meetings where I sit with people of varying backgrounds and we discuss how bad I, as a white male of indeterminate faith, should feel when I’m classist, when I’m racist, when I’m sexist, when I interfere with the voting rights of minorities, etc.
It’s not a horrible, heartwrenching story or anything. Mostly, I’ve just been “fuckin’ college boy” at a couple of my jobs and taken inordinate amounts of shit for being literate. (I mean that as strictly as I possibly can. One of my bosses was completely illiterate and gave me shit for being in school.)
Mostly, I just use the story to break the monotony of “and then this guy that looked like Tom said…”
I once enrolled in an obscure graduate course at a predominantly (98 percent) black university. My first (and last) day of campus found a group of students walking by as one said, “What’s that white boy doing on our campus?” Chuckles followed a sneer or two. It was one hell of an experience–something words can’t convey–and gave me the briefest of glimpses at the crap African-Americans have to put up with.
Shavuot, 1999.
Shavuot is a Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah. Traditionally, you stay awake all night learning Torah, and if you’re lucky enough to be in Jerusalem, walk down to the Western Wall at sunrise. Since I did happen to be in Jerusalem, I went to a women’s Torah study and had a really nice time. As sunrise approached, we headed down to the Old City. There were thousands of people all going the same direction, and my friend J. and I got separated from our group. We went on down to the Kotel (Western Wall) and found, off to the side of the courtyard, a large barricaded area set up surrounded by military police. There were bunches of little services going on everywhere and we didn’t see anyone we knew, so we wandered over to the barricaded area and asked a military policeman what the barricade was for. He told us it was for the Reformim (Reform Jews). Well, J. and I are Reform, and we didn’t really have anything else going on, so we went through security and ended up with a few hundred other people behind a guarded barricade.
And I am glad we had the barricade. When services began, a crowd of Haredim (Ultra Orthodox) surrounded the barricade and spent several hours shrieking at us. Most of them were children or teenagers. It was disheartening, to say the least, that adults would permit their children to behave in such a way, especially on a holy day. How much do you have to disagree with someone to prefer to spend your holiday screaming insults at other people than to do your own praying?
Fortunately, there wasn’t any physical violence. Someone threw an empty soda bottle at a woman, but she wasn’t injured.
And to top it off, as the day started, so did a hamsin, a really unpleasant (read: HOT) desert phenomenon. Because it was a holiday, the buses weren’t running and we weren’t carrying any money to take a cab, so we ended up walking the three or four miles home. In 100 degree heat. Uphill. After having been awake all night. Wearing dress shoes. And having people shriek at us for four hours. Yes, truly my best day ever.
I got picked to be an assistant site supervisor over the supervisor’s choice—another guy. He didn’t want me; none of them did. They were all guys, but they were kind of a bunch of Mary Sues. I have a military background, and these guys were either inadequate or hostile. It’s not unfair to say inadequate; they were just lazy, and you couldn’t even get them to use the phone correctly. We had one guy who lost the building keys. Seven times. One time should have gotten him warned, and the second offense should have seen him get fired. Didn’t happen.
A guy I'd had problems with before---he'd asked me out, then turned nasty when I wouldn't go out with him----showed up with a new hire. New hire was a foot and a half taller than me---and hostile. Told me I was asking for it, that women asked for it, and that they'd victimized him all his life. Somebody should rape me, he said. That's what should happen to women like me. All ver batim quotes. Oh, yeah, and there was just one other female on staff. She quit after one of the OTHER staffers sexually assaulted her. When told of this, the boss whined, "Oh, dear." And did nothing. She quit.
The new hire guy turned out to be a rapist/wife beater and he was supposed to be fired. One of my buddies on the police department looked up his sheet, and it was four pages long. I’m totally sure that the times he was arrested but not convicted he was totally innocent. Sure he was. Pure as the driven snow.
But when the time came to fire him, none of the supervisors who were supposed to back me up turned up. I was alone in a building with this guy and his attitude. Strange, I’m sure. I mean, when I was training this guy in, and I told him, “Oh, yeah, there’s this thing that we have to do, too,” he responded with:
'WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT BEFORE?! YOU’RE JUST TRYING TO SABOTAGE ME! YOU HATE ME, YOU WANT ME TO GET FIRED!" Ver batim. And they left me alone with a guy who coudln’t take orders from a woman, to fire him.
I sent the guy home so tactfully that he almost didn’t know he’d been fired. His buddy showed up and told me he’d heard I’d compalined about him, and that he was going to write me up and get me fired for lying about him. Who’d told him that? The supervisors had helpfully showed this guy my complaint----they’d given him a copy.
I reported to my boss’ boss the threats, the rape threats, and so forth. His response? “Are you sure you didn’t say or do anything to make these guys think that you might like that kind of thing?” He said it three times. I wrote it down. He really believed it.
And I was the one who got fired. I went to the EEOC, but there were so many guys at that job—and there was just one me. It was their word against mine, and they just made shit up, then alibied each other.
I got blackballed for months. I couldn’t find work. The one true thing my boss ever said—that he knew the head of the company, and the head of another company—was true. I coudln’t do anything. It was too many of them and one of me. I was a ‘troublemaker.’
I’m not sure if I whooshed you or you whooshed me. I’ll assume it’s the latter.
In any case, my comment there was just meant as a placeholder, so I could come back here today when I had more time.
Last Friday, I went into an urgent care facility run by the same hospital where my wife works with a minor concussion, and the doctor on duty refused to treat me.
The laws of the state where I live may dissolve my marriage against my will if I have my legal status changed to female. Some states wouldn’t recognize me as female even if I did. The result is that I may end up legally male in some states, but still married, legally female in others, but not legally married, and legally female and still married in others.
If I were arrested in my current jurisdiciton, I could be placed in the male sectiion of the jail.
I lost my job last year as a result of someone in insurance claims revealing my medication to personnel.
When Mrs. Six and I needed to move into an apartment for a month after we sold one house and were waiting for construction on our new house to be finished, we were told by roughly a dozen complexes that no rooms were available shortly after they saw us listed as spouses on the rental application.
We’ve had enough unpleasant experiences in our local comic book shop that Mrs. Six won’t go in there anymore, though this is a result of our being relatively attractive Asian women rather than lesbians.
I could go on, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m playing victim. Most of the time, it’s live and let live, and we get to go about our business in peace.
I’d also like to say that I think most people get discriminated against in small ways that we may not always notice.
I always, without exception, get offered to have my groceries carried out to the car and loaded for me. This offer was less consistent before my transition. I’m getting offered a service a man in the same situation might not. It’s essentially harmless, and most men wouldn’t want it any way, so it goes unnoticed. But it is a service offered more often to one sex than the other. Harmless, sure, but just one of a dozen ways people are treated differently because of sex, race, size, or other factors that we may just accept because that’s the expected behavior.
Anaamika, I live in Nashville, TN in a neighborhood where there are people from many countries including East India. I have often wished that I knew more women from India as I have always found the country, cultures and foods of interest. I know only one and she runs the store which is very central to the Indian community here – so everyone knows her.
I am very sorry for the lack of kindness that was shown to you when you were here. It makes me ashamed. Those who mistreated you did so out of ignorance.
I can understand your not wanting to travel this way again, but if you ever have need to come this way, you will have a welcoming friend here. I know a place that has fantastic lamb pasanda. It is my favorite restaurant.
Again, my apologies.
Namaste
Yes, Kaitlyn, I was teasing you. Human beings do bad things to one another - group behaviour is one aspect of this. But the greatest challenge of all is getting on with people who are similar to us (where envy, competitiveness, the struggle for status and recognition are so strong, yet usually so hidden).
When I read in the Bible “do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly”, my own pride means that I fully understand the latter temptation. But the former one (being partial in favour of the poor, the underprivileged, minorities) is just as bad. Perhaps more so, because in addition to inequity one is demonstrating self-deception (which invariably leads to one deceiving others), and one is being a hypocrite.
And this is not aimed at you. Perhaps you know me well enough now to recognise my style - even if you cannot divine my heart, my intentions. I mention it because you always inspire me to higher levels, where I share the best of what I have learned in my life, however useful or valid that “best” might be.
You are a fighter among giants. Keep fighting the good fight.
Gropwing up in an overwhelmingly Catholic city, I ran into a lot of anti-Protestantism. I didn’t wear my religion on my sleeve, but I was often turned down for dates because I wasn’t Catholic, or of Italian or Polish ancestry. Once, in grad school, a date asked me to take her home in the middle of dinner; the conversation went something like this …
Her: “You live off of North Forest by Maple, so you live in St. Gregory’s, then, huh? How do you like the church?”
Me: “Well, I guess it’s in St. Gregory’s parish, but I’m not Catholic. I occasionally go to a Lutheran church in Buffalo with Mom, and Dad goes to a temple on Sheridan Drive.”
Her: “Take me home. Now.”
I also got a lot of questions from friends and their parents like “Do Lutherans believe in God?” and the like. I went to a Catholic elementary school, and a couple of times I, along with the two Protestant kids in my class and a Jewish kid, were coerced by the nuns to take communion.
For some reason, the time a female friend of mine and I went to a new coffee house-ish restaurant in her neighborhood called Cybele’s, the waitstaff there ignored us while serving other customers. Turned the waitstaff at the time were mostly lesbians, and they had a reputation of ignoring male customers or those who came with men. The place is still there, but I don’t know if it’s breeder-friendly or not now.
There’s also the usual tales of local governments hiring a black male over me, who was usually the second-runner-up, to meet diversity goals. Not much to say there.
I had a similar experience in high school. I was on our track team, and since the throwers (shot and discus) had different event times than everyone else, they let us drive our own cars to the meets.
Anyway, this week’s meet was the TSU Relays, a joint high school/college affair at the only historically black college in Houston. For those of you who aren’t aware, TSU (Texas Southern University) is a black college in a predominantly black part of town.
I got there early- like 3:30 pm, and was, for all I could tell, the only white person out of all the college students milling around and all the high school athletes and coaches getting ready.
It was a really strange feeling. Nobody was hostile or anything like that- mostly indifferent, just like a big group of white people would have treated me. I was still relieved to spot a few guys from another school who I did know so that I didn’t feel quite so uncomfortable.
I guess I have been discriminated against in the past also, although it’s such a penny-ante story, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it. Several years ago, I was in New Orleans at Mardi Gras watching a few of the parades with some friends (taking a break from the drinking). The particular crowd we were in seemed to be about half black and kind of segregated to boot- the black people were on the left side, while most of the white people were on the right.
The Domino’s guy went over to the black side with one of those insulated boxes full of pizza and started selling them. I went over and got in line hoping to buy pizza. The Domino’s guy, who was black, proceeded to sell pizza in the order that people were in line, until he got to me. At that point, he started selling pizza to any black person who came up to either side, or behind him, but not me. I was trying to get his attention, and finally when he sold out of pizza, he says to me “Sorry. I’m out.” with a grin.
That’s the first and only time I’ve been treated that way on account of my race, and it really made me think about this kind of thing in a new light. Until then, it’d been kind of an academic concept, but that really hammered it home that it was real, and sucks royally for anyone on the receiving end.
And here I thought I was just telling a few stories about my life.
Thank you. It’s nice to know that I’ve affected you in a good way.
Some people are born with the desire to change the world. Nothing much you can do about it.